Nfts
OpenSea wants NFTs to scale as market plunges 63%
Last year was not good for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Blockchain-based digital asset sales fell 63% to $8.7 billion in 2023, even with volume tripling between October and November, Bloomberg News reported Sunday (January 14), citing data from CryptoSlam.
As this report notes, NFTs were a defining characteristic of the crypto bull market in 2021, considered the most accessible way for ordinary consumers to access the digital currency market.
They were even something of a status symbol: anyone willing to spend money could buy an NFT and make it their profile picture on Twitter. These days, Bloomberg says, X – as Twitter is now known – no longer supports NFT profile photos.
Devin FinzerCEO of NFT Marketplace Open Seatold Bloomberg that the industry views NFTs as more than just collectibles, and said he defines industry – and company – success as more than just sales numbers.
“One of the things we’re most excited about is not necessarily how to generate the most volume, but rather how to create the most compelling use cases for NFTs,” he said.
Finzer said his company is working on “OpenSea 2.0,” an improved platform that he believes will provide a better user experience and greater differentiation between NFT categories as more uses of the tokens become available. will develop.
For now, he added, NFTs are displayed the same way on OpenSea and other platforms, whether it’s a gaming token or an event ticket.
“We really want to have a marketplace interface that can be better customized to fit each type of use case,” he said, adding that OpenSea is working on displaying NFT tickets on a calendar and sort them by date.
The report also notes that even though NFT sales were declining, the bitcoin price – the most popular cryptocurrency – surged 160% in 2023.
However, last year, crypto startups struggled to raise funds amid a regulatory crackdown and two high-profile criminal cases.
Venture capital investment in the crypto industry has fallen to only $9.5 billion during the year, less than a third of the previous year’s total.
The sector’s struggles were particularly pronounced in the fourth quarter, when FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of multiple fraud chargesand Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering requirements.